Are we witnessing the birth of a new meta-WoW?

[Ghostaro]

It seems that WoW will have the biggest change from its inception until now.
As of now we were citizens of Azeroth, adventurers of sort living in this planet in a definite timeframe (sort of with the allied alliances and new Kalimdor and EK), we livedfrom the end of Warcraft 3 till now, granted we have some time jump going forward or backward nut nothing special.
Now in Shadowlands (9.0) we will have a new meta, a new WoW game!
It seems that we create our chara and become a time traveler or a scholar of sort.
We begin our “life” not in the “normal” Azeroth as it was the common startup since WoW beginning until now. We begin in Stormheim (Why? Why not another zone? Why Stormheim is special?) from lvl 1-10, then we will run a “mini dungeon”, maybe some kind of test or final evaluation that we will pass and at the end Chromie will award us with diploma and a gift!
As a time traveler / scholar / Bronze dragonflight agent you will have to travel to the past, to some defined era and place to do some kind of job, pleasure trip or other kind of voyage!
We will go to:
Kalimdor – EK (Classic)
Outland (TBC, flavored for BE)
Northrend (WoTLK, flavored for DK)
Pandaria (MoP, flavored for Monks)
Kalimdor – EK after Deathwing awakening (Cataclysm)
AU Draenor (Warlords of Draenor, flavored for Orcs, Shamans)
The Broken Islands and Argus (Legion, flavored for DH)
Kultiras, Zandalar and other (BFA, flavored for Trolls and Kul Tirans)

And after that, maybe, you begin your “last” trip, some kind of special mission or your reason of existing…Shadowlands for a final battle between Life and Death.
I don’t know if this will be good or bad, but it seems that something in the meta or lore will change after 9.0 hits.
Will we become some kind of entity? After all we were advancing from, adventurer to commander to hero to head of our order to most respected or influential character in our faction!
What will happen after Shadowlands? Will we become some being that will travel across the other spheres of the WoW meta-universe?

[Cosmic Janitor]

What will happen after Shadowlands? Will we become some being that will travel across the other spheres of the WoW meta-universe?

By far my biggest concern with the whole setting. Once your plot lets you conquer death, especially if you describe it in grandiose and absolute terms like "infinite", "across the universe" and "all souls", as well as make you buddy with a central figure like the Arbiter who serves as the fixpoint, where do you even go from there?

While we have the shadow/void and light left to explore, this setting is entirely too grand to go anywhere else and be it a space exploration expansion.

That being said, Ion already mentioned us being special because we are connected to Azeroth directly (doesn't this sound familiar /rolleyes), I could only guess that they will do something with Azeroth or that connection to bring us back down to reality, because no matter how I look at this, playing with the very frame of your fantasy setting rarely ends well in stories - unless you are about to end them soon.

[Ange]

...playing with the very frame of your fantasy setting rarely ends well in stories - unless you are about to end them soon.

We had Mist of Pandaria out of the nowhere.

The whole exploration to isles system is endless and needs only a minimal lore framing. Additionally every content patch is introduced with better frameworks for quicker development for future content.

With the new streamlined 1-50 leveling for each old expansion they are allready reamping 7/8 of the world never played normaly by the players. The ACTIVE gaming world just got 8 times bigger and the whole new system just adds every comming expansion to the factor.

Imagine just for a second, how big the game will be for a new player in shadowlands. You can level 8 chars 1-50 in completly different VERSIONS of WoW, with complete new storylines. Basicly "endless" non repetitive leveling experience for casual players who only want the leveling part of WoW.

And you think shadowlands kills WoW? If it kills anything it might be classic, since they normalize the level range to 1-60, bring more leveling options, the base class abilitys comming back, gimmicky "harder open world" and casual content without time restrictions, so the 8hour LBRS crowd can feel home again in retail.

Every "deep dive feature" was directed at the classic leveling/early-max-level players to transition them from classic to retail. The base structure from LEGION/BFA is completly adopted with LFR/N/HC/M raiding and mythic+dungeons and the worldquest system. The artefact/essence variation gets version 3.0 (4.0) with the covenant system. Its hillarious how positive the reactions are from the classic crowd, because its 99% LEGION/BFA.

[Cosmic Janitor]

We had Mist of Pandaria out of the nowhere.

The whole exploration to isles system is endless and needs only a minimal lore framing. Additionally every content patch is introduced with better frameworks for quicker development for future content.

With the new streamlined 1-50 leveling for each old expansion they are allready reamping 7/8 of the world never played normaly by the players. The ACTIVE gaming world just got 8 times bigger and the whole new system just adds every comming expansion to the factor.

Imagine just for a second, how big the game will be for a new player in shadowlands. You can level 8 chars 1-50 in completly different VERSIONS of WoW, with complete new storylines. Basicly "endless" non repetitive leveling experience for casual players who only want the leveling part of WoW.

And you think shadowlands kills WoW? If it kills anything it might be classic, since they normalize the level range to 1-60, bring more leveling options, the base class abilitys comming back, gimmicky "harder open world" and casual content without time restrictions, so the 8hour LBRS crowd can feel home again in retail.

Every "deep dive feature" was directed at the classic leveling/early-max-level players to transition them from classic to retail. The base structure from LEGION/BFA is completly adopted with LFR/N/HC/M raiding and mythic+dungeons and the worldquest system. The artefact/essence variation gets version 3.0 (4.0) with the covenant system. Its hillarious how positive the reactions are from the classic crowd, because its 99% LEGION/BFA.

What does that have to do with anything I said? I was pointing out how ascending into the realm of your story's gods and their creation often is a one way street in story telling.

[Coldfire989]

10.0 is 100% going to be the final expansion. It's two year mark will put it just in time for the 20th WoW Anniversary Blizzcon. Either War4 or WoW2 after we kill the void lords next expansion.

Lol no it isn’t at all. It is 100% not going to be the last one. See I can pull arbitrary nonsense out of my butt too

[Boricha]

Maybe they'll finally do a hard reset with WoW 2 after this.

[Cosmic Janitor]

10.0 is 100% going to be the final expansion. It's two year mark will put it just in time for the 20th WoW Anniversary Blizzcon. Either War4 or WoW2 after we kill the void lords next expansion.

Unless they lost all hope with BfA I very much doubt that. It would mean the whole franchise is in dire straits and not worth continuing, which again I doubt. The sub feee, MTX income and expansion sales make this thing still a no brainer.

[Gadzooks]

What will happen after Shadowlands? Will we become some being that will travel across the other spheres of the WoW meta-universe?

I think it's less that, and more they're now forced to do something about leveling, that they ignored and slapped bandaids on in the past. They had to abandon the leveling as covering the entire story from vanilla to now, because it's just gotten so massive and time consuming, that it's avoided at all costs - paid boosts and allied races didn't encourage people to do it, either. So now they have to cut most of it out of the game. It was inevitable. Either do WoW 2, and abandon the old stories, or do something like this.

Not saying it's great, or bad. But inevitable. They have 15 years of content for players to slog through, and it came to a head - and is almost certainly impacting new players, and driving new players away. I know if I walked into WoW as a new player right now, and learned I had weeks to slog through alone before playing with friends or doing new content, I'd hard pass on that.

This is an acceptable compromise, I guess. You can pick and choose what old content you want to play through, and ignore it or revisit it later.

[Army Dreamer]

10.0 is 100% going to be the final expansion. It's two year mark will put it just in time for the 20th WoW Anniversary Blizzcon. Either War4 or WoW2 after we kill the void lords next expansion.

Yeah. They are gonna call it WoW X.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I think it's less that, and more they're now forced to do something about leveling, that they ignored and slapped bandaids on in the past. They had to abandon the leveling as covering the entire story from vanilla to now, because it's just gotten so massive and time consuming, that it's avoided at all costs - paid boosts and allied races didn't encourage people to do it, either. So now they have to cut most of it out of the game. It was inevitable. Either do WoW 2, and abandon the old stories, or do something like this.

Not saying it's great, or bad. But inevitable. They have 15 years of content for players to slog through, and it came to a head - and is almost certainly impacting new players, and driving new players away. I know if I walked into WoW as a new player right now, and learned I had weeks to slog through alone before playing with friends or doing new content, I'd hard pass on that.

This is an acceptable compromise, I guess. You can pick and choose what old content you want to play through, and ignore it or revisit it later.

A new player would always have a boost though, so that is a non-issue. They could have also done the squish and all related systems with any setting, nothing about leveling requires us to duke it out with death.

[DietzThought]

10.0 is 100% going to be the final expansion. It's two year mark will put it just in time for the 20th WoW Anniversary Blizzcon. Either War4 or WoW2 after we kill the void lords next expansion.

Absolutely not. With the new leveling system, Blizzard laid the groundwork to make many more expansions, without ever having to make major overhauls again. They'll do a level squish probably every 6-8 years and that's it. The new starting zone will be totally separated from the major storylines, this way it'll never be outdated.

[MuricaIsDead]

We had Mist of Pandaria out of the nowhere.

The whole exploration to isles system is endless and needs only a minimal lore framing. Additionally every content patch is introduced with better frameworks for quicker development for future content.

With the new streamlined 1-50 leveling for each old expansion they are allready reamping 7/8 of the world never played normaly by the players. The ACTIVE gaming world just got 8 times bigger and the whole new system just adds every comming expansion to the factor.

Imagine just for a second, how big the game will be for a new player in shadowlands. You can level 8 chars 1-50 in completly different VERSIONS of WoW, with complete new storylines. Basicly "endless" non repetitive leveling experience for casual players who only want the leveling part of WoW.

And you think shadowlands kills WoW? If it kills anything it might be classic, since they normalize the level range to 1-60, bring more leveling options, the base class abilitys comming back, gimmicky "harder open world" and casual content without time restrictions, so the 8hour LBRS crowd can feel home again in retail.

Every "deep dive feature" was directed at the classic leveling/early-max-level players to transition them from classic to retail. The base structure from LEGION/BFA is completly adopted with LFR/N/HC/M raiding and mythic+dungeons and the worldquest system. The artefact/essence variation gets version 3.0 (4.0) with the covenant system. Its hillarious how positive the reactions are from the classic crowd, because its 99% LEGION/BFA.

'well guys, we've conquered life AND death, and we now spit on lowly titans and old gods...'

'OH WAIT, THERE'S SOME NEW ISLANDS WITH MURLOCS AND NAGA CAUSING TROUBLE!'


seriously?

[clevin]

'well guys, we've conquered life AND death, and we now spit on lowly titans and old gods...'

'OH WAIT, THERE'S SOME NEW ISLANDS WITH MURLOCS AND NAGA CAUSING TROUBLE!'


seriously?

that's the problem with WoW... it long ago got away from "You're an adventurer who skills up to be a really good (class), perhaps one of the best." to "You're THE commander in this cross universal invasion (WoD), you're THE BEST (class) and the only (class) in the world worthy to wield this artifact (Legion)."

And we're supposed to go defeat titans and gods and now death... and there's no real way back to what we were before. But it starts to become less than credible and it also kind of limits where they can go with the story. There are only so many threats like this. And really, players are going to take on Void Lords, etc... primal forces of the universe? With SWORDS? Come on.

[karzal]

'well guys, we've conquered life AND death, and we now spit on lowly titans and old gods...'

'OH WAIT, THERE'S SOME NEW ISLANDS WITH MURLOCS AND NAGA CAUSING TROUBLE!'


seriously?

Honestly... I wouldn't mind a more simple enemy from time to time... sometimes I'd rather just go and kill an angry bear who's terrorizing a small village instead of gahz'ruka, the destroyer of worlds.

[Krawu]

Or maybe we'll piss off the Arbiter somehow in the end and get kicked out of the Shadowlands for good. Wouldn't that be different.

[Aurrora]

Maybe they'll finally do a hard reset with WoW 2 after this.

There’s never going to be a WoW 2, we’ve seen enough examples of companies attempting sequel MMORPGs, it just cannibalizes the playerbase. The only way a WoW 2 makes sense is if WoW shuts down completely and then years later Blizzard wants to create another MMORPG, but that’s unlikely as MMORPGs are past their heyday.

[Ghostaro]

'well guys, we've conquered life AND death, and we now spit on lowly titans and old gods...'

'OH WAIT, THERE'S SOME NEW ISLANDS WITH MURLOCS AND NAGA CAUSING TROUBLE!'


seriously?

Yeah, that is my point too.

Enviado desde mi SM-G935U mediante Tapatalk

[zlygork]

Edit: Bad Zlygork, bad.

[therealbowser]

Level squish makes me feel exactly the opposite of "Blizz is thinking of ending the game"

Why would anyone think Blizzard was going to kill WoW? It's still the most successful MMORPG.

Either way, on topic, I am sure they have some ideas in mind. It's obvious in BFA they were trying up loose ends to allow them to work on new lore, like the stuff in Shadowlands. If that's the case I'm hopeful, because Shadowlands is really interesting. There are a large number of directions they could go, but further exploring Azeroth seems unlikely. We might revisit areas, but that would be odd as well.

I'm not going to guess where the story is going right now, but I am sure they will hint at it in Shadowlands. Probably some evil will escape from the Maw and set the next expansion in motion. Or maybe it will even be something unexpected, like having to do with Gallywix. Really hard to say.

- - - Updated - - -

10.0 is 100% going to be the final expansion. It's two year mark will put it just in time for the 20th WoW Anniversary Blizzcon. Either War4 or WoW2 after we kill the void lords next expansion.

lolno

The last WoW expansion will be the one where WoW is no longer profitable, and the game has to go into non-development or is flat out shut down. We are not even remotely close to that point, and there is no reason for Blizzard to make "WoW 2" when WoW is perfectly functional on modern machines.

And don't even try "but we need to upgrade the graphics!" No, we don't. It's fine as it is, because it runs well on all machines. It's a big selling point for WoW and always has been. The only reason we'd have a WoW 2 is if the system WoW was designed on was too limited to be upgraded or move forward... and that isn't the case at all.

[zlygork]

Why would anyone think Blizzard was going to kill WoW? It's still the most successful MMORPG.

Either way, on topic, I am sure they have some ideas in mind. It's obvious in BFA they were trying up loose ends to allow them to work on new lore, like the stuff in Shadowlands. If that's the case I'm hopeful, because Shadowlands is really interesting. There are a large number of directions they could go, but further exploring Azeroth seems unlikely. We might revisit areas, but that would be odd as well.

I'm not going to guess where the story is going right now, but I am sure they will hint at it in Shadowlands. Probably some evil will escape from the Maw and set the next expansion in motion. Or maybe it will even be something unexpected, like having to do with Gallywix. Really hard to say.

- - - Updated - - -



lolno

The last WoW expansion will be the one where WoW is no longer profitable, and the game has to go into non-development or is flat out shut down. We are not even remotely close to that point, and there is no reason for Blizzard to make "WoW 2" when WoW is perfectly functional on modern machines. "but we need to upgrade the graphics!" no, we don't. It's fine as it is, because it runs well on all machines. It's a big selling point for WoW and always has been.

Nvm, I started misreading the last few lines of the OP. My apologies.